Collin Street Bakery

The bakery was founded in 1896 by August Wiederman, an immigrant from Wiesbaden, Germany. With the help of local entrepreneur Tom McElwee, the bakery soon outgrew its original building, and required a new one in which the second floor was turned into a hotel. Celebrities such as Enrico Caruso and Will Rogers were sighted at the bakery, and in 1914 the Ringling Brothers Circus passed through town and ordered dozens of fruitcakes as Christmas gifts to be mailed to friends and family across the globe. In this way, the bakery entered the mail-order business. Lee William "L. W." McNutt, Sr. (1895-1972), Harry Cook, and Bob Rutherford purchased the bakery in 1946 from August Wiederman.

Fraud and film

In 1998, Collin Street Bakery hired a bookkeeper, Sandy Jenkins. Jenkins was promoted to the controller in 2004 when he earned approximately $50,000 per year. Before being caught in 2013, Jenkins embezzled over $16 million. Jenkins died in prison in 2019. A movie about the scandal has been in pre-production since 2019. The film is slated to be titled Fruitcake and originally starred Will Ferrell and Laura Dern, but was recast with Paul Walter Hauser and Jennifer Garner in 2024.